Auctioning based Coordinated TV White Space Spectrum Sharing for Home Networks

Abstract

The idea of having the geolocation database monitor the secondary use of TV white space (TVWS) spectrum and assist in coordinating the secondary usage is gaining ground. Considering the home networking use case, we leverage the geolocation database for interference-aware coordinated TVWS sharing among secondary users (home networks) using {\em short-term auctions}, thereby realize a dynamic secondary market. To enable this auctioning based coordinated TVWS sharing framework, we propose an enhanced {\em market-driven TVWS spectrum access model}. For the short-term auctions, we propose an online multi-unit, iterative truthful mechanism called VERUM that takes into consideration spatially heterogeneous spectrum availability, an inherent characteristic in the TVWS context. We prove that VERUM is truthful (i.e., the best strategy for every bidder is to bid based on its true valuation) and is also efficient in that it allocates spectrum to users who value it the most. Evaluation results from scenarios with real home distributions in urban and dense-urban environments and using realistic TVWS spectrum availability maps show that VERUM performs close to optimal allocation in terms of revenue for the coordinating spectrum manager. Comparison with two existing efficient and truthful multi-unit spectrum auction schemes, VERITAS and SATYA, shows that VERUM fares better in terms of revenue, spectrum utilisation and percentage of winning bidders in diverse conditions. Taking all of the above together, VERUM can be seen to offer incentives to subscribed users encouraging them to use TVWS spectrum through greater spectrum availability (as measured by percentage of winning bidders) as well as to the coordinating spectrum manager through revenue generation.